Tag: Grantaire

To Follow – estelraca – Les Misérables – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables – All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

edwarddespard:

I think of all the E/R fics – or fics featuring Enjolras and Grantaire as individual characters – Estelraca’s “To Follow” is one of the most underrated. Possibly because it’s canon era and was originally published pre-movie? At the time a much smaller fandom recognised its extraordinarily power, but for some reason it never seems to show up on fic rec lists, in spite of its well-crafted, pitch-perfect characterisation.

This is one of the most exquisitely written pieces in fandom, and is one of the most (possibly the most) superlative barricade survival fics ever written. It does justice not only to Enjolras and Grantaire in the characterisations, but also to each of the Amis who are written with beautiful nuance.

Almost unbearably and painfully poignant, is ultimately hopeful, and embodies not only the sense of looking to the future and the unquenchable, enduring faith Enjolras embodies, but also Grantaire’s devotion, warmth and love. Unlike so many survival fics, this has no self-doubting Enjolras (and, thankfully, it’s free of the “Grantaire restores Enjolras’ faith” or “Enjolras eschews his former beliefs as naïve in the aftermath of the barricades”). Enjolras is the adamantine figure of belief Hugo created, even as he has to face a future without his beloved friends. And that is what I love most about this story – it acknowledges loss, and sorrow, and abiding grief, but it is also written with a profound respect for what the Amis fought for and what they believed.

If you haven’t read it, please do so – it’s beautiful, it’s haunting, it’s powerful.

Oh, this takes me back.  I remember reccing this fic on Tumbr when it first came out, and it’s still just as great to read as it was back then.  It’s a shame to hear that it hasn’t received much recognition.

To Follow – estelraca – Les Misérables – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables – All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

edwarddespard:

pilferingapples:

So this excellent post got me thinking about some things re: canon era and Grantaire’s place in the Amis that I think is easy to miss either through the musical or just through the fog of history?

First: that the Amis are in fact working in a violently repressive dictatorship. There’s sometimes an attitude that them being students means they enjoy a level of social privilege equal to modern students in democratic countries and that’s…really not true. Any. At all. Pretty much no one has that level of privilege in their society. They are living with strict, government-enforced limits on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of religion (Charles X, the king in 1828,  brought back laws making sacrilege punishable by death),on and on. They sure can’t vote; that was for people who weren’t just wealthy but fantastically wealthy, we’re talking 1 percenters all the way. If Enjolras or Prouvaire were THAT rich we’d know about it; they’re not (and if they were they’d still be too young until at least 25!) . 

Hugo doesn’t have to get more specific about this social reality in Les Mis because his immediate audience–France under Napoleon III– was STILL living with that reality. Les Mis was banned and had to be smuggled in, while Hugo himself was in exile, having left Paris literally to save his life as an elected official in opposition to the new dictator. The new dictator had been murdering elected officials as he left; that’s the background Hugo’s assuming the reader has.

Keep reading

All of this. There’s a lot to be said about how contemporary American identity politics don’t map specifically onto the world of the Amis – even less so when, for example, Enjolras is left male/white/cis/wealthy while every other Ami is changed. The worst examples are when Grantaire – who in canon enjoys an extremely privileged life – is translated into an economically or racially oppressed figure, and from that position starts to call out Enjolras’ privilege…and Enjolras reacts angrily or defensively. It fundamentally alters the dynamics of the characters, and in doing so, butchers Enjolras’ character, his ideals and his relationship with Grantaire. 

A bit of a tangent, but what I wonder about is why fanon Enjolras is almost always left as he is in canon (aside from being more explicitly not straight, of course) when the rest of the Amis and sometimes Éponine, Cosette, etc. as well are treated with what I can’t help but think of as a Tumblr-updated version of the late 80s/early 90s approach to diversity in media (Five-Token Band on TVTropes), to the point that it can strain disbelief that a group of that nature would have organically formed to do…whatever vaguely activist things they happen to be doing.  And yet Enjolras remains the token rich cis white guy.  Is it because he’s the only one in canon with an extensive physical description?  By contrast, someone like Grantaire who’s merely “laid démesurément” usually gets rendered as “George Blagden, with scruff and a beanie” (except when he’s chubby and/or not white and/or a serious alcoholic/drug abuser instead of a social drinker and/or…).  It’s not that I’m exactly critical of such developments in fandom, but I do find the consistent trends of such fluid fanon rather fascinating.  

“J’aimons les filles”(?): A Word on R’s Sexuality

I have to say I was a bit surprised to see controversy over the meaning of Barricade Days, because while it’s probably a bit much to celebrate a failed insurrection I’m also aware that said insurrection would likely be little more than a historical footnote had Hugo not employed it in his sprawling, symbolically laden, and musical-friendly novel.  As a literary snob I naturally have to agree with Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th century praise of “poesy” (i.e. literature) for performing simultaneously the functions of history and philosophy and being superior to both by virtue of entertainment value…so there.  It’s perhaps a teensy bit irreverent for me to now do as I usually do and reduce certain characters in the Brick down to things like sexuality and gender presentation, but in my defense it’s also Pride Month and as anyone who’s read virtually any of my earlier Les Mis stuff knows it’s my opinion that Les Amis are a queer theorist’s largely undiscovered playground.

Incidentally, one could consider this a very belated coda to my Feminizing Enjolras series, which ended with E/R and therefore serves as a natural transition into this one modest post.  Grantaire exists on a much more literal level than his endlessly symbolic/allegorical would-be love interest, and I’m far from the only fan who’s already commented extensively on what symbolism does exist for him (especially in the last few weeks – I’ve seen Grantaire-as-Diogenes, Grantaire-the-wannabe-Turk, and more).  As such most of the post will be more of a personal reaction to R’s sexuality as represented by Hugo and as interpreted by previous critics (academically rigorous or not).  However, unlike my previous coda to a long series this one will not feature deliberately un-erotic erotica starring myself.  I suppose I owe the solemnity of the barricades that much at least.

Unlike Enjolras and his hotly contested sexuality, Grantaire’s portrayal in fandom is fairly consistent.  Grantaire is very worldly and not at all ashamed to admit it (or possibly to make it up when needed), which translates into a canonverse R more familiar with all manner of non-normative sex than any other Ami except perhaps Courfeyrac and a modern AU R who’s almost always gay and quite comfortably so.  Critic Graham Robb is also of the opinion that Grantaire is canonically gay, that homosexuality as the “phénomène souvent observé” is a more reasonable conclusion than a skeptic fanboying after a revolutionary for completely ideological reasons, and that syntactically burying loving between admiring and venerating is yet another example of a 19th century writer making a deliberately misleading reference to the theoretically unspeakable.  This isn’t particularly unusual for the critic who, for example, also boldly pronounces Sherlock Holmes as gay (and Holmes is a much more contested character than R) and who takes frequent issue in his writing with Michel Foucault’s theories of socially constructed sexuality and the resulting queer theoretical environment that insists on tiptoeing around potential anachronisms.  

Still, even setting aside the fact that Grantaire couldn’t identify as homosexual in a positive and widely recognized manner, I don’t buy him as completely into guys or even completely comfortable with himself.  There’s something to be said for the exaggerated aggression he displays toward first Louison and then Matelote, and his looking at women as if he were saying “si je voulais!” carries the unspoken question of why he apparently doesn’t want any woman he looks at.  In contemporary terms this could very easily be considered closeted behavior with a dash of internalized homophobia, with him going to ridiculous and unbelievable lengths to show his friends that he likes women.  The problem with that straightforward interpretation is that R is so overwhelmingly sensual (in the most nihilistic manner possible, of course) in his mostly incoherent drunken rants that, if were a matter of him being comfortably a pédé(raste) (to use an old and now derogatory term that was selectively neutral at the time, comparable to the English “invert”) I doubt he’d feel the need to sexually harass women as a joke.  The Amis produce too sexually relaxed an atmosphere for that: Courfeyrac’s “collection,” Bahorel telling Joly to show some leg, and whatever it is Lesgles and Joly have going on (and never mind what they’re actually doing, it’s got to have come up in joking conversation before).

As several other commentators have pointed out, the genuine confusion lies more in Grantaire’s feelings for Enjolras, because his habitual bawdiness is completely absent even if his sarcasm isn’t, and he’s largely unconscious of needing Enjolras or understanding that need.  I also have to wonder about Grantaire’s sexuality based on his attraction to Enjolras solely on an aesthetic level.  Spending any length of time among gay men and older men who like twinks in particular gives one the distinct impression that, in spite of frequent conflation in stereotypes, there’s a recognizable difference between boyish beauty and feminine beauty.  Enjolras is in possession of unusually large amounts of the latter, to the point that I’m skeptical if a completely gay man could find him physically desirable.  There’s a substantial amount of vitriol directed against “fems” in mainstream gay spaces, with that term being frequently extended to cover any man who deviates from the image of the idealized masculine straight guy.  Usually this attitude goes hand-in-hand with other markers like “dl” and “discreet” and with guys who are clearly not out and have no intention of changing that.  R obviously lacks that context, and if anything his classical knowledge would encourage an attraction to Enjolras as a beautiful eromenos, but again his physical androgyny is so extensive that approaching E/R from that angle alone presents problems.  

Feminizing Enjolras was essentially an exercise in how many ways I could present Enjolras symbolically as female, and coming out of writing those posts it’s easier for me to see any man attracted to Enjolras and the incredibly earthy Grantaire in particular as bisexual or even (otherwise) straight.  Combeferre, Courfeyrac, etc. appreciate and connect with Enjolras on an intellectual and philosophical level first and foremost, so I can’t see them being too hung up over appearances and their own insecurities.  I understand the sentiment behind Robb’s verdict on Grantaire – he is undoubtedly the most likely character in the Brick to be gay – though with all the comparisons of E/R to Lucien/Vautrin and Dorian/Basil that have been flitting in and out of my writing over the past few months I have to say that the angels have much more in common with each other than do their admirers.  Vautrin is comfortably gay and Basil is gay and taking thinly veiled refuge in aesthetics, but Grantaire just comes across as very confused – unless one interprets his moment of revelation in OFPD as both sexual and ideological, of course.  There’s no such thing as too many symbolic OFPD interpretations, especially on June 6.

lalondes:

antiqone:

help

THIS PERSON THINKS ENJOLRAS LITERALLY HAD A MISTRESS NAMED PATRIA

There are no words.  I mean, aside from not getting Patria, completely misunderstanding Enjolras’s politics by situating it in a 20th-21st century American context by name alone, using courtly love as a means of describing Grantaire’s supposedly non-sexual love for Enjolras, negating the homosocial aspects of traditionally all-male environments like the military, and being explicitly homophobic, that is.

Fun with Les Mis Lyrics

sinnaonthebarricade:

Red and Black is one of my favorite songs, mostly because there’s so much going on here, both on and below the surface. Particularly Marius’ verse. On the surface, it’s pretty direct: “Enjolras, you don’t understand LOVE.” But below the surface, well, just look closely. I’ve bolded some things for your convenience.

Had you been there tonight
You might know how it feels
To be struck to the bone
In a moment of breathless delight!
Had you been there tonight
You might also have known
How the world may be changed
In just one burst of light!
And what was right seems wrong
And what was wrong seems right!!

Do you see that? He could, at points, be describing a gunshot wound rather than falling in love.

This can’t be a coincidence. Two innuendos is a coincidence. Three means something. A couple things, actually, in this case.

Remember Enjolras’ “mistress” from the book? Patria. Enjolras does know this “love” thing Marius is talking about. His love is very different and exactly the same, and this really underlines that. Marius’ love is the beginning of life. Enjolras’ love is going to kill him. But the beginning of Marius’ love and the end of Enjolras’ can be described in the exact same words.

Also, this may be stretching it a bit, but it’s been established (I can’t find the post but I know it exists) that Grantaire’s death in the brick includes a pun in French along similar lines. (“to be struck by a thunderbolt” also means “to fall in love at first sight.” It’s the first sight part that makes me think this might be an intentional reference.)

Marius, Enjolras, and Grantaire are the three major players involved in this song, and this verse has a different meaning for each of them. I love that.

Reblogged mostly for the remark about Grantaire, because I can’t believe that escaped my notice until now.  Yes, just when you thought OFPD couldn’t possibly have any more symbolic/figurative language than what has already been dug up, there’s this.  "Coup de foudre,“ literally "lightning strike” is an idiom analogous to “love at first sight.”  This is such a Pontmercy concept that I didn’t even think of it in context of this scene, and yet  we get that “Grantaire, foudroyé, s’abattit à ses pieds” (“Grantaire, [as if] struck by lightning, collapsed at his feet”).  I thought that the lightning metaphor was a bit much and a bit distracting from the obvious Crucifixion imagery, but I didn’t think about it going here.

A bit of a stretch since this is far from their first meeting, but maybe R has never loved Enjolras as much as he does in this moment?  Evidence for the metaphorical sex reading continues to build….

screaming from the gallery: So I think that the Aristogeiton and Harmodius allusion (in Enjolras’…

rose-and-valerie:

So I think that the Aristogeiton and Harmodius allusion (in Enjolras’ intro paragraph) is interesting in reference to Enjolras’ sexuality, but I think the comparison also is a bit ironic. I doubt Victor Hugo was giving this as much thought as I am, but this couple stands for the exact opposite…

screaming from the gallery: So I think that the Aristogeiton and Harmodius allusion (in Enjolras’…

what beautiful monsters, oh: rly not fond of the gay interpretation of grantaireeven from just the…

mekbuda:

rly not fond of the gay interpretation of grantaire

even from just the film he’s p. evidently attracted to women – marius has to interrupt him and a woman together once the revolution’s started, what evidence do you have to dismiss that this was genuine?

sure you can pull the ‘trying to forget…

Agreed about the binarism, as I think that R’s sexuality is more complex than some people (even Serious Critics) acknowledge.  In the book he’s very vocal about his sexual interest in women, even when they constantly reject him for being ugly and generally obnoxious.  In addition, I think it’s possible to read Grantaire’s confusion over his attraction to Enjolras as set up in the Brick as a form of gay panic, especially when one considers (as I have, at considerable and frankly exhausting length) that Brick!Enjolras is heavily feminized and as a result might be a major source of mixed confusion and attraction for anyone who’s interested in him.  

I think if I wanted to add a prompt for myself to the list I’m building up for May, I would add a discussion of Grantaire’s sexuality – not a multi-part post, but just a fairly short reevaluation relying mostly on direct textual support.   

what beautiful monsters, oh: rly not fond of the gay interpretation of grantaireeven from just the…

Feminizing Enjolras: A Primer – What to Do When Your Author Symbolically Pairs You with a Total Loser, Part 2

If the last post was a lengthy comparison of pederasty and courtly love just barely connected to Les Mis, this one aims to tie those unusual parallels into E/R in such a way as to better understand how Enjolras’s feminization affects Grantaire’s behavior toward him.  It’s already fairly elementary to read E/R as failed pseudo-pederasty, and as noted pederasty (and its various post-classical derivations and reinterpretations) participates in often subtle feminization of the younger/submissive partner.  With that in mind, it’s not difficult to see that at work with a character already extensively feminized at nearly every turn.  The leap to E/R as an attempted courtly love affair, with Christian ideals of love supplanted by political conviction and Patria re-framed as Enjolras’s husband (instead of his mistress), is therefore not a terribly difficult one to make.  Imagining R as a knight-errant is another matter, but then I never said that he’d make a good courtly lover.  

To His Coy Mistress: Gender-Confused Edition

It’s easy enough to assert that Enjolras would not take to the idea of being wooed by anyone – least of all Grantaire, who fails in the one task Enjolras ever sets for him in the Brick and makes himself little more than a nuisance besides.  Perhaps Enjolras might play Salome and ask for the head of a dangerous political enemy or two on a platter, but then I would doubt Enjolras’s capacity to be that dramatic and Grantaire’s skill at decapitation (not to mention the parallels between Enjolras and St. John the Baptist already wreak havoc with that allusion anyway).  

Grantaire, of course, has no trouble making the effort to get Enjolras’s attention.  In addition to his general attention-seeking behavior (drunken ranting, singing obnoxious songs parodying royalist ones, etc.), R apparently has no problem with assuming an unusual degree of intimacy with Enjolras.  In the Barrière du Maine scene he quite aggressively goads Enjolras into giving him a job, interjects some curiously intimate (and often quoted in the fandom) one-liners into the conversation – “Je crois à toi.” and "Je suis farouche.“ – calls Enjolras an ”ingrat“ for justifiably doubting him, whispers in his ear ”Sois tranquille.“ (which I’ve seen translated multiple ways, the closest of which in my opinion is "Don’t worry.”), and even interrupts the conversation to go home and put on a red waistcoat to show off.  All in all, I have trouble seeing him as a genuinely subservient man approaching someone he regards in almost religious terms as opposed to a man affecting subservience – it’s so reasonable that Enjolras would want him for boot polishing, right? – in an effort at getting in Enjolras’s good graces.  

The illusory quality of Grantaire’s prostration holds something in common with the power dynamics of courtly love I briefly mentioned last time.  While the women in courtly romances are often presented as having absolute power over the besotted lovers tasked with proving their worth, in practical reality courtly love still works within the confines of patriarchy.  If a lady may take liberties with her lover it is only because she is married, which marks her as more mature and authoritative than an unmarried woman and also gives her a legal and spiritual basis for belittling and rejecting the lover and his attentions.  This doesn’t directly apply to E/R unless one wants to argue that the act of feminization in some way strips Enjolras of his male privilege; however, it’s homosexuality to the, um…“rescue,” as desire that is not only taboo but also censored even from being publicly mentioned makes for reasonable cause to reject R. 

And reject him he does, though it’s also interesting to note that the manner in which he does so is in at least partially in keeping with the extremely elaborate medieval notion of courtesy.  In a courtly romance, a courteous lady should do her best not to emphasize the romantic and sexual dimensions of her discourse with her lover, either by ignoring his more obvious overtures or pretending not to understand them.  Enjolras clearly does this – he has no response to any of those intimate remarks in the Barrière du Maine scene, nor does he appear to notice R’s “douceur” and “yeux tendres et troubles” when ordering him away from the barricade.  Even the necessity of censoring/encoding explicitly homoerotic content doesn’t entirely account for it, because it would have been quite easy for Hugo to have Enjolras address Grantaire’s protestations of belief in him in non-romantic terms.  It might even have added more to the political themes underlying their relationship.  Instead, Enjolras cannot acknowledge Grantaire’s most overt demonstrations of affection because he is too full of his political conviction and dedication to his  country and “husband” (and how much more like a husband than a mistress Patria really is, especially as the false subservience to a mistress discussed above is then replaced with the legally and morally bound subservience owed to a patriarchal husband).

Not Another OFPD Interpretation!

It seems like everyone and their bread-stealing foster father has to interpret Oreste à jeun et Pylade ivre, because everything from the chapter title to virtually every tiny detail in the chapter itself is overloaded with freely intermingling and sometimes conflicting symbolism.  I’m not going to suggest that this is scene is somehow a metaphor for sex (although one could accomplish that with some awkwardness by drawing upon Renaissance sex/death parallels).  I will, though, recall discussion from the last post pertaining to the idealized form of courtly love, romantic love without sinful consummation, often expressed in seemingly minor forms of physical contact – for example, say, hand-clasping.  Furthermore, recall who is doing the asking and who the accepting in this scene, a setup that also echoes the dynamics of sexual consent as well as more of those superficially inverted power dynamics of courtship, best expressed, in my opinion, with a hint of satire in Austen’s Northanger Abbey: “man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal.”  Even people who don’t care for this ship would probably not like to think about what would have happened had Enjolras refused Grantaire, but the possibility remains, and we tend to think well of Enjolras for making his final act of agency the acceptance of a man who until that moment had never been worthy of it.

Feminizing Enjolras: A Primer – What to Do When Your Author Symbolically Pairs You with a Total Loser, Part 1

Apparently I just needed a day off from long posts, because I’m back and ready to finally finish this behemoth of a series (really, how did this deceptively small topic become such a huge project?).  Until now I’ve been talking about Enjolras independent of any romantic entanglements – the man is extremely queer all on his own, and the non-romantic reactions of the characters around him to his queerness provide ample material for understanding his virginity and androgyny.  Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I didn’t also spend some time talking about E/R, if only because it’s not every day in pre-20th century literature that one sees a male character being desired by another man in so transparent a fashion.

One may get the impression from the subtitle and from the tone of much of this post that I hate Grantaire and/or E/R.  I’ve already brought this up before on Tumblr, but to reiterate I should emphasize that I do actually like the ship.  That being said, the tone I take with analyzing it in the Brick is largely the product of how it’s developed (or rather, not).  I don’t think Hugo is going to win any awards anytime soon for depicting extensive, well-paced relationship development – just look at Marius/Cosette – but even still E/R is the height of paradox, so heavily supported on a symbolic and allegorical level and yet so realistically implausible without major character development (which would necessarily be the job of fanwork to carry out).  If it’s canon, it is so only in that their relationship (whatever that may be) is thematically significant.  

Significant in terms of the overt political themes of the novel, perhaps, but how does E/R play into the subtextual and probably unintentional theme of this series?  It’s not as though there’s some obvious connection between male homoeroticism and femininity – outside yaoi/slash conventions that turn gay sex and relationships into erotica for women, that is.

As unrealistic and sometimes offensive as the artificial feminization of an uke (or a bottom, in non-Japanese slash fandoms that have appropriated yaoi conventions) can be, it’s not an alien phenomenon either in non-fetishistic representations of male homosexuality from the outside (think every stereotype of gay men as limp-wristed, effeminate queens) or in the unconscious emotional dynamics of many a gay male sexual encounter or relationship.  Even the ancient Greeks, who liked to deride feminine mannerisms as thoroughly as they derided women in general, engaged in (perhaps unconscious) feminization of teenage boys when outlining the ideal qualities of an eromenos and the ideal pederastic relationship.  Absence of facial and body hair is perhaps the most often cited physical attribute of the eromenos, though in addition Greek men valued a certain passivity in their boys, framed (by modern scholars like Kenneth Dover and Martha Nussbaum at least) in the same terms as those of the idealized female virgin of pre-20th century heterosexual courtship.  Indeed, the eromenos was ideally expected to not be aroused by the attentions of his erastes, which is a laughingly unrealistic expectation.  However, it also reminds one strongly of the very long tradition in Western culture of acting as though women have no sex drive.  Much of this is power dynamics and the need for the male gaze to render its object as submissive and Other, but it really does say something when even the incredibly misogynistic Greeks can’t avoid using heterosexual gender roles as a model for their sanctioned and highly valued homosexual relationships.

Because Vanilla Heterosexuality Is Just Boring, I Guess: Courtly Love as an Appropriation of Pederasty

If I were discussing E/R in its pederastic dimensions, this would be where I return to the Brick, because there’s no lack of evidence therein; while Orestes/Pylades was significantly not pederastic, many of the other classical pairs to which E/R is compared are – Antinous/Hadrian, Alexander/Hephaestion, and Nisus/Euryalus among others.  However, as I’m looking at Enjolras not as a 19th-century eromenos but as a highly feminized male character I find it worthwhile here to take a closer look at courtly love, which in some ways bears a marked resemblance to Greek pederasty.  Naturally, the Greeks are more immediately relevant to E/R as a homosexual relationship, and at first it might seem more appropriate to leave medievalist discussions to Prouvaire meta, but one should always be willing to chase wild and largely unfounded theories to new and ever more solid headcanons.

Courtly love as a concept has not survived very well; sure, many people have heard of it, but the spiritual and social details underlying its practice have been mostly forgotten and replaced with a vague idea of courtly love as an exact medieval analogue for modern romantic love.  Those details, incidentally, are the very things that help tie together courtly love and pederasty.  For starters, both fetishize non-heteronormative and, if consummated, socially disruptive relationships.  Pederasty’s break from the heteronormative is obvious, though the Greeks’ disdain for anal sex as abusive and demeaning to the submissive partner – especially in his position as future citizen of the polis – is less remembered.  The traditional courtly love relationship, on the other hand, is adulterous, which in the strong Christian environment of medieval Europe carries its obvious dangers if realized.  Arguably even more seriously, the male lover is often a vassal to his lady’s husband, turning their sexual union – should it happen – into a violation of the lover’s feudal vows and of the hierarchy of social class and religion known as the Great Chain of Being.  Intense romantic love without sex was fetishized as the strongest kind of earthly love and a symbolic stand-in for the greatness of Christ’s love for humanity.  Of course, the “consummation is evil” strain of courtly love hasn’t held up very well – Chaucer, Shakespeare and many other writers have turned the husband terrified of being cuckolded into a comic figure, the 19th century produced multiple examples of sympathetically tragic adulteresses such as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, and this trend continues in this logical progression in modern media with what TVTropes calls the “Disposable Fiancé” (ex. Sleepless in Seattle, Titanic).  We tend to downplay the fact that, say, the most famous courtly romance of them all, Lancelot/Guinevere, became a full-blown love affair and indirectly brought down Camelot in the process, or that two of the most famous figures in the Divine Comedy, Paolo and Francesca, are damned to an eternity in Hell in the Circle of Lust after consummating their relationship and then being surprised and killed by Francesca’s husband. 

Another point of commonality lies in the behavior of the desired one.  While some Italian writers like Dante and Petrarch turned the objects of their affection into spiritually transcendent Christian muses (literally transcendent in the case of Dante’s Beatrice in Paradiso), elsewhere the courtly love interaction is more earthly, even flirting with the sensual.  As I talked about earlier, pederastic lovers idealized demure, passive boys, but they also gave the eromenos the capacity to choose his lover, something a Greek girl couldn’t do for her marriage.  Similarly, courtly romances noticeably afford women more agency in accepting or rejecting the advances of their lover and in treading the fine line between a spiritual ideal and a disruptive and damnable sin.  Whether used bawdily as in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale or Merchant Tale, semi-comically as in the partial role reversal of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or seriously as in some of the lais of Marie de France, the woman of a courtly romance is presented as coy, powerful, and in control of her situation relative to a subservient and emotionally overwrought lover torn between his love and his recognition that his lady is bound to another.  Well, when they’re not working together to dupe the husband, that is – Chaucer really likes to poke fun at jealous husbands.

Is any of this starting to sound comparable to E/R?  Hopefully it is, because next time I’ll be returning to the Brick in order to put this massive intertextual study back into its intended context.  We already know Grantaire fails pretty hard at being an erastes; is he any better at being a courtly lover?  Eh….